


Tonight will be fine

by witheredsong



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:28:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4784054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witheredsong/pseuds/witheredsong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halfway here and halfway there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tonight will be fine

“You are an idiot.”

Words with no heat behind them, but a world of affection and worry. Probably John is the only one who feels this way about his lamentable indiscretion.

 

Since the news broke, he’s had about 50 hysterical unbearable calls from Elen, two from his father who’s said nothing but, “I’m so disappointed in you”, a dozen from his mother to the tune of, “How could you, Frank? She just gave birth! I raised you better than this”, and one terrifying one from Elen’s dad where the old man threatened him with castration. He’s in deep shit and the fear that claws though him most is concerning his daughters. He can’t live without Luna. Or the baby. The thought brings him out in a cold sweat.

 

And until this phone-call, his other fear was John. That John would enter a room and his eyes wouldn’t search out for him, that he’d just see through Frank. He knows how John can get when he’s pissed off, but the thought of having that directed at himself is … he can’t even complete the thought in his own head, his heart hurts. Instead, John sounds perfectly normal, and his eyes suddenly sting.

 

 

“So, other than being a lothario and seducing ‘sexy latinas’, what else have you being doing?” He can hear Georgie or Summer in the background, gurgling happily, and he misses his daughters so badly. “Lamps? Can you hear me, Lamps?” John sounds urgent and he realizes he’s just been staring blindly at the hotel room’s walls without answering. He wants to reassure John, say something funny, but what comes out in a rush is this.

 

“I’ll lose them. I will. John, what…”. And that’s it. This is too hard. He wants John near him, not across the ocean, and he wants his daughters and Elen and everything to be just the way it was.

 

John sounds uncharacteristically serious. “You should’ve thought of that before. Wanker. Just like you to get caught in fucking Vegas.” And then, softer, “Everything will be okay, Frankie. The team’s meeting in three days, I’ll see you.” John ends the call and he just stares at the blinking display, a cold unsettled feeling in his stomach. Briefly he ponders getting drunk, but that is a temporary anasthetic, and his head hurts enough without the added burden of a hangover come morning.

 

The phone rings. John again. “Go to sleep.”

 

He tries. He lies on the too large and too empty hotel bed, stiff, eyes wide open in the darkness.

 

 

The team assembling is a pain. He knows how hard the boys try not to ask questions, but they try so hard it becomes an issue in itself. When Petr silently squeezes his shoulder on the way to practice, he almost loses all his composure. Jose has no such compunctions, of course. He gives him an earful and in a way that’s a relief after the cold shoulders, and so-disappointed-speeches and the general on-eggshells treatment he’s received. And then there’s John. There’s always John. John who’s not spoken a word to him since morning, somehow missed him throughout the day, always busy doing something or the other for the team.

 

Now it’s night and he’s sitting on the lounger beside the windows, watching the lights of the city. And waiting. Every footstep outside in the corridor makes his breath quicken, and this waiting is intolerable. There’s a rising panic in him, John has to come to him. Has to. He’s too ashamed to go to him. In other circumstances he’d have gone without thought, reaching out for John was instinctive, much like breathing. But he can’t shake the feeling that he’s somehow cheated on John as well, let John down as well as Elen. And if John comes to him, it’s forgiveness. John will. John must. He can’t, won’t think about the alternative.

 

He thinks he’s conjured up the telephone call three days ago in his head. He had wanted to hear John’s voice, John’s assurances, and so his subconscious dreamt up what he desired. Because the clock’s inching towards midnight, almost two hours since lights-out, and yet, the footsteps he’ll recognize anywhere even if he grows to be eighty and senile do not echo in the cavernous gloom outside his room. Time loses all meaning and waiting’s all he can do.

 

He’s dreaming of those first days at Chelsea, John has taken him to the races. He’s never been there before, and the adrenaline is rushing through him, when John comes and pushes a pink slip in his hand. “I bet on you. Your shirt number. Now let’s see how my luck holds.” As simple as that, and the bastard winks at him. He can’t help asking, money still something precious, “How much?”

 

John smirks and says, “Twenty grand.” He’s appalled, looks at John with wide eyes, but John won’t have any of it. “Come on, Frank. We’ve a horse to cheer.” In the rush of the race, screaming without noticing, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, he turns and finds John looking at him, a strange expression in his eyes and he can’t catch what it is. But at that moment, the race ends, John’s horse actually wins, and John crushes him in a hug, “You’re my lucky charm Lampsy.” Screamed in his ear, and kisses on his forehead as he feels suddenly shy, hides his head in John’s neck, kissing the pulse beneath the jaw, actions they’ll repeat a countless times, as John murmurs, “Lamps…”, over and over again.

 

He wakes up, disoriented, and there are a pair of arms around him, smoothing over his shoulders, a voice he knows from his dream. He looks up, and there’s John, kneeling beside his lounger, smoothing his hair from his forehead, and if this is a hallucination, his mind is playing cruel tricks on him.

 

He closes his eyes, opens them again, and John is still there. He touches his cheek with stiff cold fingers, doesn’t quite believe John’s there, until his fingers find the sandpapery roughness of a night-stubble, the eyes looking at him concerned, and he exhales, the relief leaving him weak.

 

They lie fully clothed in the bed, face to face, and John does nothing but touch him over, through the clothes, as if making sure he’s the same as before, as if learning him all over again. He can’t make his hands let go of the shirt John’s wearing, fingers clenched in the fabric, and all he can say is, “I’m sorry.” John tilts his chin up with two fingers, and asks, “What for, Lampsy?”

 

He can’t tell him. John would, he realizes, call him a girl, John isn’t upset about the woman, and he can’t tell John how it felt to see him in the church, beside Toni, how it felt as if a door had been barred to him forever, the door to the room where he could retreat when he was tired and hurt and nothing made sense and where he’d be safe. Can’t tell John of this hollow in his heart, the jealousy, and how he’d taken to walking about slowly, precisely, as if the pain would spill over at sudden movements. Everything had been sour, the defeats in the league and CL and he couldn’t have John, and he’d gone after her in the hotel to forget, and now he’d lose everything anyway.

 

To have John back near him seems a miracle, he just shakes his head and burrows close to John’s warmth, and he hadn’t known how cold he’d been until John warmed him through.

 

“I’ll talk to Elen. And you should be sorry Frank. That porno-stasche at my wedding? Toni laughed for a week afterwards.” John says, and Frank hurts all over again.

 

 

In the half shadows of dawn, John speaks again.

 

“Whatever were you thinking, Lamps?

 

“If you do anything like that ever again, I’ll kill you,” John suddenly says, fingers digging into his hips.

 

“I share you enough as it is. I can’t share more”, and John’s voice is rough.

 

The light from the window creates patterns on the walls and he holds onto John tighter. Wherever he wanders, one call from John and he’ll always be back. And John will paper over his cracks.

 

But he knows, waits for the day when he’ll listen and listen, yet John will not call him back home ever again.


End file.
